HUNTING FROM LONDON. 271 



former town this has been so through tlie century from the 

 time of Lord Sefton's famous mastership ; and ' Nimrod,' it will 

 be remembered, at the end of his great ' Quarterly ' article, expa- 

 tiates (or makes ' Snob ' expatiate) in glowing terms on the grand 

 style in which things were done. One is given to understand, 

 moreover, that the society in that favoured spot is at this day a 

 particularly sprightly and entertaining one. Certainly it must 

 have been so a few years ago, to judge from the racy strains in 

 which Whyte-Melville has chanted the praises of ' the Monks 

 that live under the hill.' ^ And, no doubt, the golden youth of 

 those happy hunting grounds still live as hard, and ride as hard, 

 in as gay, if not quite in as grand, style as their fathers who bid 

 ^ Snob ' to their board in the evening after they had cut down 

 him and the ' little bay horse ' over the grass in the day. 



But still, this is not quite the same thing as hunting from 

 home. Of course, these hunting centres are very gay and jovial 

 places, and the company, both male and female, of the very 

 best sort, both in the field and at home. Of course, too, to fre- 

 quent the same place season after season, though it be only for 

 hunting, and during the hunting season, is a very different thing 

 from wandering in search of sport, or making London your 

 head-quarters. But to live in a town for the sole purpose of 

 hunting ; to hunt every day, and to take flight to London the 

 moment the hunting is over — perhaps at every temporary 

 cessation— is clearly a very different thing from hunting from 

 your own house, your abiding place. It is, no doubt, a very 

 good thing in its way, and to gay and vigorous spirits, blended 

 wdth plenty of health, leisure, and money, is a most pleasant 

 and easy way of passing time. But it is not the same thing as 

 the other form of hunting, w^iose praises we uphold. Followed 

 in that fashion, the pursuit of the fox, or whatever the animal to 

 be hunted may be, becomes a part of the country gentleman's 

 condition, like his flower garden, his dairy, his fat beasts, and 

 so on. Hunting in this way, Nimrod is humanised ; his manners 



1 See his So?is's and Verses. 



